Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Raising Forage and Bait When will I see schools of threadfin?

We stocked 10 pounds of thread fin in September and i have the nine acre pond well fertilized. How long do you think it will take for me to see big schools of the shad?

10# of threadfin shad, stocked in 392,000 sq. ft. of area.

I can answer your question if you can tell me how many males and females were stocked, and how many of each survived getting eaten in the previous 8 months. What month in 2024 did the water temp reach 68 degrees?

No predator fish stocked yet unless you count the copper nose and red ear stocked at the same time . Water temp reached 68 mid March

In that case I'd say later on this summer or Fall.

thanks

I was under the impression that threadfin shad die off each year when waters get below a certain temperature.

Is that a misunderstanding on my part?

OP is just north of New Orleans.

That should be warm enough that TFS will survive the winter temps.

Lake Texoma (at the Oklahoma-Texas border) has a huge population of TFS that creates a great striper fishery. At that latitude, they do suffer some diebacks once or twice a decade. However, some TFS seem to always survive in the deep water.

I think the OP should be fine (temperature wise) if the pond does have some deeper water.

Rod, I had heard that even in Texas, threadfin shad needed to be restocked every year. That's why I was asking, just to make sure I didn't misunderstand things.

I think their water temperature limit is around 42-43F.

However, you may still be correct that they need to be re-stocked every year. In a pond, with clear water for much of the year, I expect they would be slaughtered by predation. Even with rooted vegetation where something like golden shiners would hide, the TFS still tend to school up in the open water.

I do not recall a lot of glowing tributes to TFS from our TX-LA pondmeisters. Don't know the reasons, but I believe that TFS are very fragile to handle and transport to other bodies of water? However, I think Lusk is a big fan of them for bass ponds that cannot grow monster bass large enough to control gizzard shad?

[Comments note - FishinRod is NOT an expert on TFS.]

Depending on location TFS can survive TX winters about 75% of the time. That % changes a lot with location - Houston area they will survive most all winters but less likely to survive in north TX. Then when it does get too cold you have to restock. Because TFS are plankton eaters a good bloom is necessary.

It would be unlikely that TFS experience cold die-off in Hammond LA but possible in small waters and an extreme cold snap.

In late May and June look for rippling on the surface early morning and late afternoon as an indication that the new batch of TFS have hatched.

We stock threadfin every few years in our 50 acre lake in northeast Texas. The only die off I have seen was a couple of years ago when we hit -12 for a week and 3/4 of the lake froze over. Even then, the lake temps were about 40 if you went down a foot or two. In normal years our lake doesn't get below about 44. We had a very good shad spawn a couple of weeks ago on the full moon, and the bass were pounding them during it.

In late May and June look for rippling on the surface early morning and late afternoon as an indication that the new batch of TFS have hatched.